As of: March 29, 2024, 9:38 a.m
By: Florian Pfitzner
Comments
Press
Split
According to media reports, the AfD in the Bundestag is said to employ at least 100 right-wing extremist employees. What to do? The constitutional lawyer Günter Frankenberg would initially leave the secret services out.
Berlin - To protect the Bundestag, its President Bärbel Bas wants to deny access to parliament to extreme right-wing employees of AfD MPs. The fact that personal information should be requested from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is now met with criticism.
The constitutional lawyer Günter Frankenberg warns against targeted secret service inquiries. “It gives me a stomach ache,” says the lawyer in an interview with
IPPEN.MEDIA
. “I basically don’t have a good feeling when people say that we rely on the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to protect democratic institutions.” There are also “people within the domestic intelligence service that we as democrats don’t actually want to see there.”
The German flag flies in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin. © picture alliance/dpa | Kay Nietfeld
Bundestag President Bas explained that it was important to weigh things up specifically: "If we have actual evidence that someone is actively and specifically working towards the elimination of the free democratic basic order, I would like to be able to use data from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in individual cases." “To introduce a kind of attitude TÜV for all employees,” emphasized Bas, who belongs to the SPD. However, if in individual cases - for example through press reports - there are indications of anti-constitutional activities that have an impact on security in the Bundestag, “we have to be able to find out more”.
AfD grants enemies of the constitution access to parliament
Bas was reacting to the recent debate about tougher rules for employees in the Bundestag. Bayerischer Rundfunk had previously researched that the AfD parliamentary group and its MPs had employed more than 100 people from organizations that were classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The AfD rejected the report.
Frankenberg is now urgently warning against an “AfD decree”, especially against the historical background. In January 1972, the federal and state governments agreed on the so-called Radical Decree. As a result, applicants and public service employees in the Federal Republic were checked for years to determine whether they were faithful to the constitution. “We are through with that,” says the emeritus professor of public law, legal philosophy and comparative law at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, “that was devastating and affected us, the political climate and the constitutional state from start to finish only caused harm.”
From 1972 to 1991, around 3.5 million applicants for public service in the federal and state governments were checked nationwide through a “regular request” from the hiring authorities to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Most of those affected were members of the DKP or its affiliated organizations. Even in the 1970s, the decree met with increasing resistance from the population, especially among young people. The SPD-governed states gradually repealed the rule request from the late 1970s. As a result, the states that were run by the Union at the time also moved away from the Radical Decree, most recently Bavaria in 1991.
My news
Shooting down of F-16 fighter jets: Putin threatens to attack NATO airfields read
Quake in the construction industry: Read the bankruptcy of a large German real estate company
Cheese recall: Federal Office warns of health risks – according to the RKI, three groups are particularly susceptible to focus reading
Silent holiday before Easter – What are you allowed to do on Good Friday in Bavaria? read
Meloni takes action: Italy cancels the “super bonus” read
She had planned Gottschalk's visit to BR completely differently: Schöneberger lost his composure
The means of the rule of law
A fundamental distinction must be made between institutional and individual measures, explains Frankenberg. “I initially have a preference for protecting institutions rather than immediately targeting people.”
Frankenberg reminds us of Article 18 of the Basic Law. “It's about the forfeiture of fundamental rights.” Because of the legal hurdles and the consequences, the article is lying dormant. In the Federal Republic of Germany, no forfeiture of fundamental rights has been declared by the Federal Constitutional Court since the introduction of the Basic Law in 1949.
The constitutional lawyer therefore suggests a second option to lock out enemies of the constitution from the House of Representatives. “One could check whether these people were close to or at the center of criminal liability, especially in the statements-related offenses: incitement to hatred, slander, insult.”
According to the logic of the rule of law, the constitutional instruments are always the last resort, criminal law takes effect one step earlier, said Frankenberg. “Before you ask the secret services for personal information, you should first exhaust legal means.”